Giving your customers the right hard drive for the right environment

admin28 May 2013

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In today’s digital world, hard disk drives (HDDs) have become a critical component of life, both for the business and consumer markets. Having a reliable HDD is essential for ensuring that data, photographs, music, movies and more are kept safe and accessible. However, more important than simply having a hard drive is choosing the right HDD for the right environment.

Using the wrong drive for certain applications can cause the HDD to fail prematurely, not only causing data loss for the customer but also damaging your reputation as a reseller and the reputation of the brand of HDD you have sold. Resellers need to be able to recognise their customers’ needs and requirements, and ensure they recommend the right product for any given scenario to avoid these challenges. Luckily, WD, a Western Digital company, makes choosing the right HDD easy with its intuitive Power of Choice range of colour-coded drives, simplifying the process and ensuring your customers get the best drives to meet their needs.

The simple fact is that a hard drive is not just a hard drive, and different specifications are applicable in different environments. For example, if a customer requires a 3TB enterprise-grade drive designed specifically for a high performance environment, and the reseller advises a low-power eco-friendly drive, the drive is bound to fail as it is simply not designed to run at 7200PRM in a high-performance enterprise environment. If a drive fails within its warranty, the reseller then is obligated to replace it, however if it is replaced with another unsuitable drive, the results will be the same, which diminishes customer satisfaction with both the brand and the reseller.

With the Power of Choice from WD, choosing the right drive for any environment is made easy for resellers. WD’s drives are colour-coded into Blue, Green, Red and Black each of which represents the different class environments for which the drive was designed. The Black, Green, Red and Blue classifications assist resellers with giving the right advice to their customers, ensuring a more satisfied customer and a better customer relationship.

WD Blue
The WD Blue range offers solid performance and reliability for everyday use, featuring low noise levels, low vibration and a two-year warranty. This range offers a broad range of capacities (up to 1TB), cache sizes (up to 64MB), form factors (2.5” and 3.5”) and interfaces (SATA and PATA) for everyday PC and mobile use. The range also incorporates a 2.5” 7mm drive for ultrabooks, as well as a 5mm hybrid drive, the world’s thinnest drive. They are solid entry-level drives, perfect for everyday use, computer builders, upgrades and new users.

WD Green
WD Green drives are cool, quiet-operating, eco-conscious and efficient, featuring reduced power consumption and eco-friendly design, along with a two-year warranty. They are available in capacities of between 500GB and 3TB. With IntelliSeek technology, these drives calculate the optimal seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. They are entry- to mid-level drives, ideal for PC users with large amounts of content to store as either secondary storage or in external enclosures. The AV-GP, which also forms part of this range, offers 24/7 reliability for video streaming, supports up to 12 high definition video streams and is designed specifically for the surveillance environment. This drive features a three-year warranty.

WD Red
The WD Red range are high-end drives designed specifically for small and home office (SOHO) network attached storage (NAS) systems with between one and five bays. The drives are available in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB capacities, and an IntelliPower algorithm varies the rotational speed of the drive while IntelliSeek ensures optimal power consumption. This helps to achieve the right balance between spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms to enhance power savings. These drives deliver optimal compatibility for NAS storage, and offer WD’s exclusive NASware software technology, as well as free WD Red premium support and a three-year warranty.

WD Black
The WD Black range are high end drives, delivering maximum performance for power computing, with a rock solid mechanical architecture. A dual-processor and optimised caching ensures extreme performance, intelligent features enhance durability and reliability, and a five-year warranty offers the highest available protection on the market. The VelociRaptor range of WD Black drives offers superior performance for power users and ultra-fast speeds of 10 000RPM, making these drives a favourite in the gaming market. The WD Black Enterprise drives offer 24/7 reliability, high performance drives with capacities of up to 4TB, ideal for enterprise users.

Not all hard drives were created equal, and when it comes to storing essential business data or keeping precious memories alive, your customers need a drive they can rely on. WD’s colour-coded Power of Choice offering simplifies this challenge and helps you sell the right drive at the right time. By helping them to choose the right HDD to meet their needs, you as a reseller can ensure customer satisfaction and boost your own brand, which can only benefit your bottom line.